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Thousands Visit A-Bomb Test Site To See Nuclear History On Display

Trinity, a tiny patch of desert 100 miles south of Albuquerque, NM, is where the U.S. tested the first Atomic Bomb. The crater the explosion produced — a few hundred yards across — is fenced off today. Had you been there 72 years ago - on July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. - you would have been incinerated by millions of degrees of heat from fissioning plutonium.

[caption photocredit="Source: Wikpedia"]

Source: Wikpedia

A stone obelisk at Trinity, NM, site of the first Atomic Bomb blast.[/caption]

On the first Saturday of April and October, the U.S. military opens to the public the Trinity Site. Thousands visit annually. There’s no fee and no need to book a visit. Just turn up at Tularosa High School in Tularosa, NM, where at 7 a.m. a long caravan of cars forms for an escorted 65-mile journey across the restricted White Sands Missile Range. (Normally the range is a live munitions testing area, but is closed down for these special visits.) If you want to avoid the caravan, the Stallion Gate on Highway 380 is open for unescorted vehicle passage from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Trinity, of course, was the fruit of the Manhattan Project where, during World War II, Robert Oppenheimer and other great science minds toiled at nearby Los Alamos to develop the Atomic Bomb. When detonated on a 100-foot tower, that bomb broke windows 100 miles away. It also spread radiation fallout downwind of the blast.

At 9:30 a.m., after a two-hour drive through the desert, we found ourselves a quarter of a mile away. Jumbo, a giant steel cylinder originally built to house the bomb but instead was put near the blast to see if it would survive (it did), stands guard over the cars and tour buses in the parking area. Souvenirs are available as well as food and drinks - and porta-potties.

We took a short roundtrip shuttle bus to the restored McDonald Ranch, where the bomb's plutonium core was assembled. After that, we walked over to the actual "ground zero," a fenced-in oval. A mock-up of Fat Man, the bomb used at Nagasaki, is on display. There’s also a black stone monument at the exact spot the bomb was detonated proclaiming the site a national landmark. If you look closely near the outside fences, topped with barbed wire, tiny bits of Trinitite - sand fused into glass by the tremendous heat of the blast - are scattered on the ground. It is forbidden to take samples.

Radioactivity? According to the U.S. military, touring Trinity for an hour results in about one milliroentgen — half the radiation absorbed flying from New York to San Francisco in a jetliner. But that wasn't always the case. After the 1945 test, several New Mexico locals downwind of the blast developed cancers. In recent years, some have even protested outside the entrance gates for compensation from the U.S. government to treat their illnesses.

The next Trinity tour is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 7, 2017. All visitors must have a valid government photo ID. Arrive early as cars tend to queue up in advance of the caravan drive. The closest lodging is in Socorro, NM. For more information, http://www.wsmr.army.mil/PAO/Trinity/Pages/Home.aspx.

I write about extreme adventure and those who do it. I've bobsledded with the Olympic team; piloted a super-boat at 140 mph; flown to 84,000 feet at Mach 2.6 in a MiG;

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I write about extreme adventure and those who do it. I've bobsledded with the Olympic team; piloted a super-boat at 140 mph; flown to 84,000 feet at Mach 2.6 in a MiG; skied to the South Pole and swam (sans wetsuit) at the North Pole; climbed the Matterhorn; driven the Bugatti Veyron at 253 mph; taken a .38 shot wearing a bulletproof fashion jacket (it hurt); gone bull-fighting (hurt more - three broken ribs); figure-skated with Olympian Sasha Cohen (hurt most - concussion). I've also purchased a ticket to fly to space with Virgin Galactic. You get the idea: I like to push limits and inspire others to do the same. I've written for Forbes, Departures, Black Ink, Bloomberg Businessweek, AskMen, Huffington Post, New York Times, Automobile, Popular Mechanics, among others. My books include "Forbes To The Limits" and "The Right Stuff: Interviews With Icons Of The 1960s."